Metacognition: Thinking about your Thinking
Nemo dat qudd non-habet: no one gives that which he or she does not have. As a student hoping to enter the teaching profession, I cannot come into a classroom expecting students to reflect upon what they know and how they learned such thing s if I have not myself obtained metacognitive skills. Such an interesting concept in that many teachers have a wealth of knowledge that they could be sharing but they lack the metacognitive skills to be a model of reflection for students.
Let’s start by defining metacognition as thinking about your thinking. Does seem like a complicated task, yet several people struggle with the ability to take time to simply process the way that their mind works and the way that they actively engage their learning experiences. Why is this so hard? I believe that as a society we are so concerned with the end product that we strip its connection to the process it took to create the product. We would much rather analyze content rather than concepts.
To expose you to metacognition’s role in the teaching profession, let me show you exactly what metacognition entails. For starters, in thinking about ones thinking, a person would discover the limits of their memory, the amount of knowledge with which one can absorb and retain. Furthermore, metacognition is not merely about what one is capable of doing but the length of time that must be provided to complete a given task. More importantly, an individual needs to learn the answer to how they go about learning. In essence, what strategies and techniques are effective and which ones are not. The latter part of that sentence is critical in that a person who has truly mastered the art of reflection not only is aware of what they understand, but also what confuses them. Then, the extent to which that person puts forth effort to obtain the knowledge held within the area that they do not comprehend is imperative.
Essentially, metacognition is an awareness found through reflecting on one’s own thoughts. These skills are critical to the teaching profession in that teachers need to model how to correctly construct knowledge and utilize what they have retained.
Can you think of any skills that can boost the art of reflection?
